One has to wonder how Barack Obama’s pledge to conduct direct diplomacy with leaders of Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea is going.

Today, Hugo Chavez called him an “ignoramus”.

Yesterday, Iran “brushed aside” his youtube video.

And North Korea has decided to test Obama’s mettle.

The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works.
-Barack Obama

Barack Obama has lost his mind.  It seems, unfortunately, that he’s leading a large portion of the country with him.  The reason that conservatives care about the size of government is because a small government will not overreach and do colossally stupid things.  It will not infringe on the liberty of individuals.  A small government has never been an oppressive or fascist government.  A small government can always grow if the people demand it.

On the other hand, a big government will think it’s working – until it’s too late.  A big government will not shrink at the whim of the people.  The beast will not voluntarily give up its power – it must be starved.  By its very nature, it will subsume dissent.  In a crisis, it will run the risk of moving too fast and doing too much.  History has shown us that the worst types of governments are the big ones, not the small ones.

President Obama has done this country a terrible disservice.  He, along with the crazed regulators in the House, have pushed forth a 90% tax on bonuses for all employees making over $250,000/year at firms that received bailout checks.  These strings-attached are retroactive.  When JP Morgan and Bank of America received funds, they did not know that their bonuses would have been taxed.  Some are considering returning the funds in order to break free of federal regulation – but why bother?  Matt Drudge reports that Obama’s preparing to push legislation to regulate all bonuses, regardless of whether the company received bailout funds or not.

Obama has framed this as a way to curb greed.  But he is not curbing greed – he is fundamentally changing the incentives and realigning the national landscape.  Obama is not content to merely regulate the practices of the financial industry; he wants to push a salary cap on the I-Bankers and Traders who’ve contributed greatly to the financial innovation and success of American in the late 20th and early 21st century.

Why not first cap the salaries of professional athletes?  It seems ludicrous that Alex Rodriguez can make $27.5 million a year playing baseball but that a star fund manager who generates great returns for the pensions and 401ks of working class Americans will be limited to 1/100th of that.  Michelle Obama made $300,000 while working for a hospital – if she’d worked for a fraction of that, the hospital could have bought more life-saving treatment for patients.  Barack Obama makes $400,000 a year – if he worked for a fraction of that, he could put that money towards programs that work rather than his own pocket (or better yet, he could return it to the taxpayers).   President Obama also signed a $500,000 book deal right before his inauguration – if he’d signed for less, he’d have left more money in the pockets of publishing companies – which desperately need it – and a new aspiring author could have also signed on.

I don’t begrudge President Obama or his wife any of their success – but they seem to believe, like many of the super-rich who backed them, that their success had nothing to do with the system of incentives that have been cultivated by the marketplace of opportunity that America affords.  It’s a dangerous belief.

From Eric Lippert:

There are two closely related definitions for “idempotent. A value is “idempotent under function foo” if the result of doing foo to the value results in the value right back again.

A function is “idempotent” if the result of doing it twice (feeding the output of the first call into the second call) is exactly the same as the result of doing it once. (Or, in other words, every output of the function is idempotent under it.)

In America, people should not live in fear of angry mobs because they made money.

Paul Krugman laments the AIG bill:

This was bad analysis, bad policy, and terrible politics. This administration, elected on the promise of change, has already managed, in an astonishingly short time, to create the impression that it’s owned by the wheeler-dealers. And that leaves it with no ability to counter crude populism.

Obama was elected on the promise of Change.  But for some odd reason, Krugman thought that Obama wouldn’t do what he promised to do.  Obama attacked NAFTA.  Obama scapegoated profit-making enterprises (don’t you wish more companies were making a profit today, Mr. President?).  Obama made economic populism the central theme of his campaign.

Obama was the ultimate Rorschach test.  But there’s no use in crying over spilled ink.

I picked very conservatively and chose UNC to win it all.

Yup, four #1s in the final four

The talk of 2012 started before the ballots were cast in 2008.  So it’s no surprise that a few months into 2009, Ross Douthat is already scoping out the race and casting Mark Sanford as the new Barry Goldwater.

You can imagine a very ideologically interesting Republican primary in which a figure like Sanford came on strong as a more mainstream version of Ron Paul (small-government rigor plus foreign-policy noninterventionism, minus the nutty-uncle factor), while someone like, say, Jon Huntsman ended up representing the party’s moderate wing.

I’m not sure that there’s room for Huntsman in the race at all.  A wealthy well-educated Mormon governor with an impeccable political pedigree and a ideologically moderate streak?  If he’s in, then Romney’s out.

I would prefer either of them above Mark Sanford.  Sanford, for all his principled libertarian tendencies, doesn’t seem like that smart of a guy.  The last two Democratic Presidents: Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.  Both whip-smart.  The Republicans can come back with a candidate like Romney or Huntsman.  Both are – and come across as – very intelligent.  Mark Sanford would be an ideal Vice Presidential pick to soothe libertarian dissension in the party.

As for the other candidates, I think Sarah Palin will go quietly into the night.  I can’t imagine that she has any real chance at the nomination.  Mike Huckabee has sold out – he’s more likely to go into Talk Radio as a full-time gig than to run again for office.  Jindal’s lackluster performance on screen will probably deter the GOP from backing him as well.  Jindal could get a Vice Presidential nod behind someone like Romney or Huntsman.  My best guess?  Romney/Jindal 2012.